Spies Against Armageddon (16 page)

The well-organized Mossad would never forget that its customer—the consumer of the intelligence—was the nation’s elected leadership, hungry for knowledge to help its efforts to pursue peace and prevent war.

If and when Israel were attacked, or Israel felt it had no choice but to initiate violent action, the Mossad’s job was to make sure that the military had the best intelligence to win the war.

Amit’s Mossad planted more quality combatants in the Arab world than before. It upgraded relations with friendly secret services around the globe. It established secret ties with Arab leaders and engaged in more clandestine efforts aimed at avoiding war.

To achieve these goals, Amit departed dramatically from Harel’s traditions and trends. But the new Mossad chief, despite his personal preference, could not stop the hunt for Nazi war criminals. The sense of historic duty was unavoidable—even for such a modern and practical agency director as Amit.

In 1964, he ordered the Caesarea department’s chief Yosef Yariv to find and kill Herbert Cukurs, known as “The Butcher of Riga” for all the murders of Jews he ordered in Latvia’s capital during World War II. Cukurs was on the “most wanted Nazis” list prepared in the 1950s by the Mossad.

Amit recalled decades later: “I and Prime Minister Eshkol, who approved the operation, reached the conclusion that after the dramatic impression which the Eichmann trial in Jerusalem made on us and the world, having one more trial of a Nazi war criminal would not create the same impact. It was more effective and less complicated to kill him.”

Born in 1900, Cukurs had become a hero in the small republics along the Baltic Sea because of his pioneering long-distance flights to West Africa and to-and-from Tokyo. He was called “the Latvian Charles Lindbergh.” After the Germans occupied Latvia and its neighbors in 1941, Cukurs enthusiastically became a general in the Arajs Kommando, a regiment of murderous collaborators that later was blamed for killing half of Latvia’s more than 60,000 Jews.

After Germany’s defeat, Cukurs managed to escape to Brazil, where he prospered as a tour operator and owner of small airplanes.

Israel’s political purpose in deciding to kill him was to send a message to the governments of Europe, and above all Germany. They were halting their pursuit and prosecution of Nazi war criminals. An assassination by the Mossad would be a way of telling the Europeans that if they did not take action through their legal channels, then they would have to face the young Jewish state’s settling of scores in its own fashion.

The mission went into motion in February 1965. The Caesarea Department operative chosen to make first contact was an experienced man, with some ideas and a cover story that might penetrate the closed social circle around the suspicious Cukurs. The Israeli posed as a wealthy Austrian businessman, and he used some local Jews and Israelis living in Brazil as sayanim to help him navigate through Cukurs’s neighborhood.

The operative was able to befriend the Latvian pilot, then 65 years old, gaining his trust and persuading him to take a business trip to Montevideo, the capital of neighboring Uruguay.

The Mossad had already rented a house there, where Yariv and three other combatants were waiting. Their plan was to stage a miniature “trial,” in which Cukurs would be declared guilty of murdering 30,000 Jewish men, women, and children. A sentence of death would be immediately carried out by the judge, jury, and executioners from Israel.

When Cukurs entered the Montevideo villa, he sensed something was wrong. He fought back, bit Yariv’s hand, and nearly grabbed Yariv’s pistol. The Israelis felt no choice but to shoot him, on the spot, using guns equipped with silencers.

The next day, yet another Mossad operative—part of a new unit for “psychological warfare,” tasked with spreading disinformation and fanning rumors—phoned a news agency in Montevideo to report that there was a body in the villa. The Israelis hoped that European and South American governments would realize that Zionist justice was real and potent; instilling some fear in Nazi war criminals would probably be a good thing, too.

Yet, nothing happened. A few days passed, and not a word appeared in the Uruguayan or other news media.

Amit ordered that another call be placed, and this time the killing did hit the headlines. Major dailies and magazines around the world told of police finding the body of the formerly flashy Latvian aviation hero, covered with blood, in a large box inside the house. A note was attached to Cukurs’s chest, declaring that he had been convicted of mass murder of Jews and was punished for his crimes “by those who would never forget.”

The long-distance execution mission achieved its purpose. West Germany’s government cancelled its plan to declare a statute of limitations on the prosecution of Nazis.

Although Amit had doubts about spending time, money, and resources on this hunt, he felt encouraged by the success in Brazil and Uruguay. Mossad men, even assassins from the Caesarea Department, could act with apparent impunity in two more South American countries.

Amit told Caesarea to pursue more names on the decade-old list of targets. Efforts were made, yet again, to locate Dr. Josef Mengele, but they led nowhere.

The closest the Mossad got to yet another Nazi war criminal was in 1967, when some strong leads were developed on Heinrich
Müller
, the brutal head of the Gestapo secret police in Hitler’s Germany. A member of Yariv’s operations team, Yair Racheli, recalled: “We believed that we were getting close to
Müller
. We located the address of his wife. The plan was to break into her apartment in Munich, to find letters and photographs—which, presumably, if he was alive, he was sending to his wife. We thought that from the letters we would find his whereabouts.”

Racheli and a partner arrived at the building and started climbing the stairs. But they were spotted by suspicious neighbors, who called the police. The two Israelis were arrested and later sentenced to six months in jail—but they never broke down to authorities and stuck to their cover story that they were British businessmen. West German intelligence suspected that they were Mossad men but chose to turn a blind eye, in the spirit of goodwill that the new Germany’s security officials generally displayed toward the Jewish state.

Eshkol and Amit did eventually phone their counterparts to tell the truth and ask that the two Israelis be released. They were set free, after serving three months behind bars.

Müller
was never found. Some investigators believe he died in or near the bunker in Berlin where Hitler committed suicide in April 1945.

Cukurs was the last and—by officially sanctioned action—the only Nazi liquidated by Mossad hit men.

Despite the failure of the break-in in Munich, and what Yariv discovered to be another abortive attempt just before that in the same city, the Mossad was working hard on new, even elaborate, methods for penetrating what were called “still objects.”

The chief innovator was Zvi Malkin, one of Adolf Eichmann’s kidnappers in Argentina. He helped create the operational unit Keshet in 1966 and moved to Europe to replace Avraham Shalom—the future Shin Bet chief who would be caught up in a scandal over the 1984 killing of two bus hijackers.
(See Chapter 19.)

One member of Keshet who took part in many break-ins reminisced: “Zvi completely changed our operational thinking. Under Shalom, the operations department was afraid of taking risks. Thus, we didn’t dare break in to embassies or offices, only to hotel rooms in Western Europe, where the targets were usually Arab officials and military personnel.” That was occasional work, only when a targeted Arab was visiting. But when methods were perfected to get inside buildings, “there started to be an operation almost every night.”

The standard Keshet team consisted of two burglars, who were masters at picking or otherwise opening locks, plus one photographer. Another one or two Mossad operatives would be outside the building as look-outs in case Arabs who worked there, curious neighbors, passersby, or—even worse—the police might notice and approach.

One of the burglars would usually be fluent in Arabic, so that he could quickly sort through the documents found and thus instruct the photographer as to which ones were important.

One such Israeli would gain, within the halls of the Mossad, the reputation of a living legend. Nothing could stop Yaacov Barda, and no mission was impossible for him. Posing with incredible nerve as an Arab businessman, Barda specialized in befriending security guards. He would entertain them at bars and clubs, thus getting them out of the way for a while, as well as learning details of the buildings’ security arrangements.

Twenty years later, in the mid-1980s, Barda would have diplomatic cover in London until being declared persona non grata by the British government. He was expelled because, as a Mossad case officer, he was running a Palestinian agent in a PLO cell that murdered a Kuwaiti political cartoonist in London.

Veterans of the Keshet operations unit remembered Barda’s managing to persuade all three guards—at Egypt’s embassy in a Western European country—to leave their shift for a night of drinks, gambling, and prostitutes. Barda’s colleagues could then easily gain access to the building, take photographs, and plant microphones and transmitters.

On another continent, a Keshet team had an easier task. An Israeli contractor built an office building in which an Arab government located its embassy. Even before construction was completed, the contractor contacted the Mossad and invited it to take advantage of the situation. A Keshet team was sent with sophisticated microphones. The team waited until the workers at the site left for home at night and then planted bugging devices in the walls.

These operations and many others had one principal purpose: to collect as much data as possible and improve Israel’s understanding of the Arab nations’ capabilities and intentions. As this was before the rise of Palestinian terrorism, Israeli intelligence focused on two countries: Egypt and Syria.

Keshet and its burglars were not the only Mossad operatives who contributed to the goal. No less important were the relations cultivated by members of the Tevel department.

Under Amit, the Mossad became an alternative foreign ministry—to the chagrin of Foreign Minister Abba Eban and his diplomats. Tevel personnel did highly valuable work by expanding liaison ties with steady allies: the CIA, the West German BND, and the British MI6. In Washington, Bonn, London, and also in Paris and Rome, the Israelis exchanged ideas and shared information with each country’s intelligence agency.

Many of those liaison partners had the ability to send intelligence agents to Arab countries, because their nations had diplomatic representation in places where Israelis were still officially banned. There were many opportunities for Israel to request, and to receive, assistance in those hard-to-reach areas.

This was one of the areas of action where the Mossad’s relations with West Germany—specifically, the BND, led by General Gehlen—were especially useful.

The Mossad became expert at “false flag recruitment,” in which a paid agent—such as an Arab, perhaps shuttling frequently between his home country and Europe—would agree to help an espionage project in many ways. The agent, though, would never know that he was working for Israel. The Mossad case officer would typically let the recruit believe that the money and instructions came from Washington, London, Brussels, or Madrid.

A false flag was the key to recruiting, for instance, Jack Leon Thomas. He was a highly educated Armenian who grew up in Cairo and moved to West Germany in early 1958 so he could try his hand at various commercial enterprises. This Israeli approach occurred while Harel was the Memuneh, but the method would be used under Amit and his successors—and continues apace today.

Thomas, while frequenting bars in Bonn and Cologne, kept bumping into a friendly Lebanese man named Emil. The party never stopped for young Emil, and he was obviously wealthy because he would always pick up the tab. They talked about business and women, and when the chat drifted into politics Thomas did not hide his hatred for Egypt’s President Nasser.

One evening, Emil offered Jack a huge amount of money and suggested that he return to Egypt to help overthrow the corrupt dictator. Thomas was told he would be working for one of the NATO countries.

In a small apartment in Cologne, anonymous people taught him the basics of espionage: photographing documents and developing the film; hiding negatives in toothpaste tubes, shoe boxes, or books; writing with invisible ink; and passing coded messages by leaving them in “dead letter drops” for unknown accomplices.

Full of enthusiasm, Thomas returned to Cairo in July 1958 and began recruiting informers into his network. From time to time, he would travel to West Germany for meetings with his operators, who continued to pose as “senior officials in NATO.” In return for the military information Thomas brought with him, his case officers gave him money and new orders.

Thomas was tasked with recruiting his own agents in Cairo—a kind of clandestine subcontracting. He tried to recruit an Egyptian army officer, but that officer reported the approach and had Thomas arrested. His apartment was found to have a treasure trove of espionage gear: five cameras, a suitcase with a false bottom, an electric shaver with a secret compartment for hiding documents, a hollow cigarette lighter for hiding film negatives, and a sophisticated two-way radio. He never even knew that it had all come from the Mossad.

An Egyptian military court convicted Thomas and two of his recruits of espionage and treason, and the three men were hanged in December 1962.

The Mossad was encouraged, at that time, by the CIA to penetrate the awakening continent of Africa. While the United States might be rejected by newly independent black nations, suspicious of superpower imperialism, Israel was seen as an imaginative and progressive success with a lot to offer. Israeli experts in agriculture, construction, and military training were welcome guests.

The CIA secretly underwrote some of these projects, occasionally with money funnelled through labor unions and the AFL-CIO.